As a small team rushed to set up an inadequate, 4ft-high stage and a lighting system the day before the show, a toxic party began. Fans arriving ahead of the show tore down the neighbouring fences for firewood and sat around playing music, taking LSD, smoking joints and having sex.

Unknown to the complacent Stones, these were no longer the happy, innocent days of the Summer of Love. Some chemists had added the poison strychnine to their LSD recipe because it was said to extend the length of the trip. Some threw speed into the mix. Bad trips spread throughout the crowd at Altamont from the start, and many fell prey to acid-spiked drinks. The crucial detail of medical care had been put off until the last minute, leaving the site with eight doctors, four psychiatric doctors from UCSF hospital, and a Red Cross team who, mercifully, had turned up uninvited.

The Hells Angels, who were paid for their vague role as a disastrous informal security force with $500 of beer, left a bloody trail all day, riding their motorbikes through the crowd to the stage and beating men and women with pool cues.

These were not just the relatively civilised San Francisco Angels known to the Grateful Dead. As Altamont was on no one’s patch, the Angels came from an unstable mixture of chapters. Some of the bikers were frankly psychotic; many had something to prove.

A fat, naked Latino man was pummelled for dancing erratically and could later be seen covered in blood, his teeth missing. A naked woman dispensing hugs received similar treatment. The injured were littered backstage like wounded soldiers.

Angels crowded the stage, savagely knocking out singer Marty Balin of support band Jefferson Airplane while they played. One sat beside Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Stephen Stills as he performed and stabbed him in the leg with a sharpened bicycle spoke every time Stills stepped forward to sing. Streams of blood soaked his trousers.

Even for the Stones, the signs were there from the beginning that this was not the peaceful hippy gathering Jagger had naively hoped for. Moments after their arrival by helicopter, a young man stepped into Jagger’s path and punched him in the face, knocking him down. ‘F*** you, Mick Jagger,’ he screamed. ‘I hate you!’

(…)

As they took to the stage, the Stones belatedly realised the situation had gone far beyond their control. Angels glowered at them from all around, and wouldn’t stop beating people in full view of the band.

Hunter, a black man with a white girlfriend, had attracted the attention of Angels all day. As the Stones went into Under My Thumb, Hunter was smashed in the face by a biker. He tried to scramble away into the audience, but four or five more Angels pounced on him.

He managed to get up and started to run away. Stumbling and out of breath, Hunter pulled a gun from his waistband.

In chilling scenes, The Maysles’ film, Gimme Shelter, captured the moment when 22-year-old Hells Angel Alan Passaro leapt through the air and plunged a hunting knife into Hunter’s neck. They tumbled to the ground together. Passaro kept stabbing the boy in the back. Several other Angels stamped on him. One stood on his head.

Jeg huskede som sagt en artikel fra The Atlantic, som via Joe Samberg, mindedes disse “hordes of kids who had been lured to California by utopian ideals and then settled into a life of sex, drugs, and lethargy”, som “by any middle-class standards, these people were living totally miserable lives.” i netop San Fransisco

There were two types of drug users on Telegraph Avenue. One group unapologetically shot heroin. The other group took mind-altering drugs but believed that opiates were a sinister way for The Man to keep poor people from climbing out of the ghetto. At first, some of the kids put up signs declaring, “No heroin dealers here.” Over time, Joe says, those signs came down and more and more people started using hard drugs. “All that stuff about consciousness was just sort of dropped.”

“You see these kids drinking Southern Comfort? Those two bottles appeared and disappeared in what couldn’t have been more than two minutes. These kids were 13, maybe 14. But they just consumed anything that would come their way.” (Joe Samberg)
Looking at Joe’s pictures, it’s clear how young some of those addicts were. One group of junior-high-aged girls, known as the Mini Mob, often showed up in Mickey Mouse t-shirts. “There were people there who had those young kids very much in their thrall,” says Joe. “They told them, ‘Listen, you don’t need to go to school. Everything you need to learn in life is right here on the street.’”

A lot had changed in Berkeley since 1964, when thousands of students—many of them wearing suits and ties—gathered at Sproul Plaza to champion civil rights and demand free speech. Campuses had been the sources of the counterculture’s boldest ideas, the places where young activists mobilized to fight segregation and the Vietnam War, taking classes in political theory and Eastern philosophy.

Now, college dropouts were congregating with misfits and runaways on the other side of Sather Gate. The outrage was still there, but the issues were murkier. While Joe was hanging out on Telegraph Avenue, his brother Paul published an anthology of underground newspaper diatribes called Fire! Among other things, the book ridiculed the whole idea of higher education:

College is a fantasy in the suburban mind of Mr. and Mrs. Work-Hard-Our-Life-Is-No-Fun-But-the-Kid-Will-Get-What-We-Can’t-Afford. The campus is a cultured nest egg where I-Don’t-Understand-He’s-Always-Been-a-Good-Boy and Oh-No-She’s-Not-That-Kind-of-Girl stroll hand in hand up the ladder to success, their tender heads floating in the lessons of the gentle professor. Only the kids never saw the professor. He was in his lab developing the new improved tear gas the kids are coughing under while the university president sits above it all.

Even at the time, though, Joe says he was “too sarcastic” to fully buy into the radical agenda. “The average person on the avenue was almost completely ignorant politically,” Joe says. “All they really cared about was drugs, drugs, drugs. They were nihilists and hedonists. They just supported anything that was against the establishment. There was no intellectual foundation. The spirit everyone had talked about—the feeling of love and new age and progressive politics—was dying a miserable death.”

Over time, Joe says he watched “mind-expanding” drugs give way to more and more heroin. “I never had the wherewithal to be a full-fledged drug addict,” says Joe. “I never had enough money. And I was never willing to sell my camera.” (Joe Samberg)

“That was my problem with the whole thing,” says Joe. “There’s no growth for people if they’re continuously on drugs. It started out with all this higher thinking—expanding your mind to become more conscious of what’s really going on in the universe. But once the drugs took over, all of those big ideas disappeared.”

The author of the Atlantic article, Mark Harris, reached a similar conclusion. He was a generation older than the Baby Boomers, but as a white New Yorker who wrote for Ebony and The Negro Digest, he was highly sympathetic to the youth activism of the 1960s. He just didn’t think the hippies, in particular, were bringing about any meaningful change. Drugs had stunted their emotional development, leaving them at the mercy of “their illusions, their unreason, their devil theories, their inexperience of life, and their failures of perception.” Instead of promoting brotherhood and equality, they’d taken over public spaces, picked all the flowers in Golden Gate Park, and refused to turn their music down to let their hardworking neighbors sleep. And as they begged for money and frequented free clinics, these children of the suburbs siphoned resources away from the urban locals who needed them most.

*The belief that sexual orientation is an innate, biologically fixed human property—that people are ‘born that way’—is not supported by scientific evidence.

*Likewise, the belief that gender identity is an innate, fixed human property independent of biological sex—so that a person might be a ‘man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’—is not supported by scientific evidence.

*Only a minority of children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood. There is no evidence that all such children should be encouraged to become transgender, much less subjected to hormone treatments or surgery.The report reviews rigorous research showing that ‘only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood.’As the report notes, “There is no evidence that all children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior should be encouraged to become transgender.”

(…)

*In both males and females, significantly higher rates of homosexuality were found in participants who experienced childhood sexual abuse and in those with a risky childhood family environment.” (41% of non-heterosexual males and 42% of non-heterosexual females reported childhood family dysfunction)

(….)

*The report notes that scientific evidence does not support the claim that people are “born that way” with respect to sexual orientation. The narrative pushed by Lady Gaga and others is not supported by the science. A combination of biological, environmental, and experiential factors likely account for an individual’s sexual attractions, desires, and identity, and “there are no compelling causal biological explanations for human sexual orientation.”

The LGBT Left’s narrative is the new nonsense. But in response to the new nonsense, there are sectors of American and European politics and culture that can’t kick away the old norms of marriage and gender fast enough, and they keep doing so in spite of the mountain of evidence that those who forsake the allegedly oppressive “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement,” to quote Black Lives Matter, face far greater challenges than those hidebound bigots who stick faithfully to the heteronormative nightmare of traditional male-female marriage.

What’s even worse — what’s downright insane — is that some on Left want to end the debate. They want to keep selling their moral vision to the public without any competition. Here’s their vision, in a nutshell: Consenting adults should be able to do what they want with their bodies, and the resulting physical or emotional harm is either reasonably tolerable or can be alleviated through a combination of government programs and public re-education.

The Judeo-Christian model, by contrast, is aspirational, calling on people not to do what they want, but what they should. Admittedly, this path is far easier for some than others, but there has always been some play in the cultural joints. The Left’s response is alluring, but it offers a self-indulgent path down which lies cultural ruin. The LGBT Left is driving us there just as fast as it can depress the gas pedal, but thanks to McHugh and Mayer, we now know they most assuredly are not doing so in the name of “science.”

Politicians are always appearing on stages and welcoming people who have unsavory histories, and I would say that for Hillary, she should be a little bit careful since her support for Black Lives Matter — does she really want to be associated with a group that chants about killing cops? And nobody would accuse her of supporting that, but that is always a risk. So it is a cheap kind of political warfare. There are of course incidents — the Mexican judge story and all that, that even Paul Ryan had to admit was a form of classical racist speech. But I think this is the old story, I’m not sure if it is going to have an effect, and surely his calling her a bigot is not going to have a lot of effect either. I think we are at the bottom of the barrel of a race we knew would be down and dirty, and that is exactly where we are now.

In the aftermath of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary [won narrowly by Hillary Clinton] — a race in which Clinton had a 20-point lead only a few months ago — the racism and hypocrisy of the Clinton campaign were laid bare for all a nation to scorn.

Desperate and willing to do anything to win, the Clintons resorted to a naked form of racism aimed directly at white working-class voters in the rural portions of the state. Their message: Barack Obama cannot win because he’s black.

In the early stages of the campaign, it was Clinton’s cadre who kept playing the race card. In New Hampshire, Clinton’s co-chair, Billy Shaheen, accused Obama of being a drug dealer; then there was the photograph of Sen. Barack Obama in Somali garb leaked to the press by Clinton’s staff.

In the aftermath of the South Carolina primary, former President Bill Clinton compared Obama’s victory to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. His message was clear: Obama was a marginal, black candidate.

[…]

To anyone who has followed the Clinton campaign closely, it is all too apparent that her top political strategists — reeling from losses from coast to coast and badly miscalculating the grassroots power of the Obama movement — made a tactical decision to go negative, as that would be the only way for Clinton to stop Obama and somehow allow her to steal the nomination.

And go negative they did — with a subtle yet consistent racism underscoring every turn.

That policy means if a biological man — for example, famous transgender athlete Bruce Jenner — says he “identifies” his gender as female, then all other students must refer to the man as a “she,” or else be treated as a law-breaker.

WVU says using the wrong pronouns is a crime because the United States departments of justice and of education insist that transgender people are protected by decades-old sexual discrimination law.

The new claim is imposed in a university statement that defines the rights of the relatively few students who are confused about their gender. Because it is a list of “rights,” it doubles as as a list of diversity commandments for all normal students;

You have the right to be treated according to the gender you identify with. Your school cannot require you to provide legal or medical evidence in order to have your gender respected.

You have the right to be called by the name and pronouns consistent with your gender identity.

You have the right not to be bullie d [sic]or harassed because you are transgender or gender non-conforming. If you are bullied or harassed contact your Title IX Coordinator, James Goins, Jr. at 304.293.5600 or James.Goins@mail.wvu.edu. You may also file a complaint online at titleix.wvu.edu

South Africa’s Caster Semenya, right, competes in the Women’s 800m semifinal at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Photo: fabrice coffrini/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The physicians argue that the assumption that gender dysphoria (GD)—a psychological condition in which people experience a marked incongruence between their experienced gender and their biological sex—is innate contradicts all relevant data and is based on ideology rather than science.

Studies have shown, the authors contend, that the “perspective of an ‘innate gender identity’ arising from prenatally ‘feminized’ or ‘masculinized’ brains trapped in the wrong body is in fact an ideological belief that has no basis in rigorous science.”

“GD is a problem that resides in the mind not in the body. Children with GD do not have a disordered body—even though they feel as if they do,” the doctors note. “Likewise, although many men with GD express the belief that they are a ‘feminine essence’ trapped in a male body, this belief has no scientific basis.”

“Conditioning children to believe the absurdity that they or anyone could be ‘born into the wrong body,’ and that a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse,” the paper argues.

The largest study ever of twin transsexual adults found that only 20 percent of identical twins both identified as transgender. Since identical twins contain 100 percent of the same DNA from conception, and develop in exactly the same prenatal environment, if gender identity were innate, the concordance rates would be close to 100 percent—rather than 20 percent.

In 2007, the American public was introduced to a transgender child for the first time when Barbara Walters interviewed Jazz Jennings, who was then six years old. That was nearly a decade ago, when the cultural awareness of trans people was dim at best. But the interview was a breakout success: By innocently and eloquently explaining who and what she was, Jazz forced us to realize that children can define themselves. Simply by being herself, she proved that breaking the supposedly serious, impassable blockade between male and female is kid’s play.

Today Jazz has become a celebrity and activist. Last year saw the premiere of her own reality program on TLC, I Am Jazz, which followed her through kitchen table conversations, friendships, parties, and all manner of drama at school. America has watched kids grow up on TV before, but Jazz is the first to do it while trans, making her an increasingly important figure. This year she will be one of three grand marshals in New York City’s gay pride march — and the youngest in its history.

“The population will be obliged to hold an individual supply of food for ten days,” the newspaper quoted the government’s “Concept for Civil Defence” – which has been prepared by the Interior Ministry – as saying.

The paper said a parliamentary committee had originally commissioned the civil defence strategy in 2012.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said the plan would be discussed by the cabinet on Wednesday and presented by the minister that afternoon. He declined to give any details on the content.

People will be required to stockpile enough drinking water to last for five days, according to the plan, the paper said.

The 69-page report does not see an attack on Germany’s territory, which would require a conventional style of national defence, as likely.

However, the precautionary measures demand that people “prepare appropriately for a development that could threaten our existence and cannot be categorically ruled out in the future,” the paper cited the report as saying.

Elections aren’t about finalities, they’re about processes. They may be about departures. Case in point, the 2016 presidential contests, which feature Hillary and The Donald. If Trump wins, the process of the November election might start a departure in more than politics. It could be historic. It won’t be good, however, for the global elites inhabiting New York, DC, Boston, and San Francisco — or wherever else ivory towers, mahogany-paneled offices, pricey secured buildings, and gated communities are found. Trump’s election would have reverberations overseas, too, in London, Paris, Berlin — yes, wherever else ivory towers, et al, are found.

A Hillary victory means there won’t be a departure; merely a doubling-down by the elite, as they act with renewed zest to secure their interests — versus the national welfare. The Great Imposition — a war waged on average Americans — will continue with awful consequences.

The worldview among many of our elite is anti-nation — dare we say — anti-American, anti-law and order, anti-tradition, anti-faith (with exceptions carved out for Islam), anti-durable values and enduring truths, like marriage between a man and woman, and family, as defined by a man, woman, and children. The elite, so very cosmopolitan, have evolved past antique beliefs and ways.

The dangers are domestic and foreign. President Hillary and anti-nation elites would continue failed policies toward Islamic militants and insurgencies. They’d serve up more perverse rationalizations for why Islam doesn’t animate jihadists. More dangers in the offing with rogue nations Iran and North Korea. Mounting danger in Asia, with China, where the PRC is boldly militarizing the South China Sea.

All pose existential threats, to one degree or another. To the elite? Obstacles to the world they’ve created for themselves. Perhaps to be solved with appeasements, like tribute (it worked for the Romans — for a while.). Ransoms(monetary and otherwise). Accommodations. Retreats. Misdirection and outright lies.

On Saturday, a group called DC Leaks posted more than 2,500 documents going back to 2008 that it pilfered from Soros’ Open Society Foundations’ servers. Since then, the mainstream media have shown zero interest in this gold mine of information.

We couldn’t find a single story on the New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, CBS News or other major news sites that even noted the existence of these leaked documents, let alone reported on what’s in them.

Indeed, the only news organization that appears to be diligently sifting through all the documents is the conservative Daily Caller, which as a result has filed a series of eye-opening reports.

(…)

Anyone with this much power and influence demands close media scrutiny. Particularly when he has extremely close ties to the would-be next president of the United States.

This year alone, Soros has given $7 million to the Clinton-supporting Priorities USA super-PAC, and a total of $25 million to support Democrats and their causes, according to Politico.

And when Soros speaks, Clinton listens. A separate email released by WikiLeaks shows Soros giving what read like step-by-step instructions to then-Secretary of State Clinton on how to deal with unrest in Albania in early 2011, including a list of people who should be considered as candidates to become an official mediator sent to that country. Days later, the EU dispatched one of the people on Soros’ list.

Thomas Lifson, writing in the American Thinker blog, said “Soros got the U.S. and other accomplices to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign state…. How is this not huge news?”

If you go back to the WikiLeaks release of the DNC emails, this is on the PowerPoint playbook on the messaging — slide number 6 — with the messaging theme number 1: Violence. They were looking for an opportunity to pick up somewhere to continue this narrative that somehow Donald Trump is violent.

Here is the relevant slide, in full. Note the suggestion to tie Trump to “incidents of violence.”

The worst case of violence was outside a San Jose rally in early June, where Trump supporters were viciously beaten and chased through the streets by a left-wing mob. Despite the fact that the rioters carried out their brutality shamelessly, in full view of the mainstream media, some media outlets blamed Trump for the violence. One headline blared: “San Jose rally turns violent as Trump supporters clash with protesters.”

And for the left, that was precisely the point: creating violence is a no-lose strategy. If protesters can provoke Trump supporters to be violent, they embarrass Trump and cast him as a fascist. And if the protesters themselves are violent, voters will understand that a Trump victory will be met with violent mob resistance.

The left has recruited some Beltway Republicans — the NeverTrump faction — as a willing echo chamber for this meme. Mere hours before the San Jose riot, David French — then considering a third-party run for president to undermine Trump and give the election to Hillary Clinton — accused Trump of inciting violence.

Trump’s primary opponents, too, blamed Trump for the riot that closed down his Chicago rally in April — rather than blaming the organized left-wing groups that created the chaos.

All of that has helped the left establish the predicate for future spin, so that when Donald Trump cites the familiar refrain that gun owners will defend their rights, he is accused of wanting to assassinate Hillary Clinton, and large portions of the media — including conservative media — believe it.

After all of THAT…after Hillary and the media and liberals…and the GOP establishment threw everything they had at Donald…

He is tied with Hillary (within statistical margin of error) in every major credible national poll out in the past few days. Pick your poll: Zogby, Rasmussen, LA Times/USC, Bloomberg, they all say he’s down 1 or 2 points with likely voters- which is tied. In the latest LA times/USC poll he’s down less than one point.

And we all know 5% to 10% of voters won’t admit they support Trump. Why would they after the three weeks of disaster I just described?

So that means he’s actually AHEAD by 3 to 5 points.

Hillary is like a NFL team ahead by 14 in the 3rd quarter…and the coach, players and fans all know it’s not enough. They can feel it. Disaster is coming. They are ahead by 14…and they just know they are dead.

If Hillary isn’t ahead by 15 to 20 points right now…at this absolute low point of Trump’s campaign…the deep, deep valley…Hillary is the one in deep trouble.

Her peak is actually the valley. Her fans and the mainstream media just don’t understand that yet. This is the high water mark of her campaign. It will never get better than this. And she’s tied, hanging on by her fingernails.

She won’t make it to the November 8th finish line. She is DOA (I mean politically, of course).

Even worse…

She knows any day between now and November 8th…Julian Assange and Wikileaks will drop a bombshell that will destroy her presidential run, political career and legacy all in one. She knows what’s coming, because she knows what’s in those emails. If Wikileaks has what Hillary thinks they have, her future involves the “Big House,” not the White House.

Because Wikileaks clearly has her 32,000 deleted emails. Secret emails that detail her crimes against the American people.

No wonder Hillary’s sick…no wonder she has “health issues”…no wonder she has trouble standing up behind a podium…or sitting on a couch without being propped up by large pillows…or walking up stairs…stress will kill you!

“I am asking for the vote of every African-American citizen struggling in our country today who wants a different future,” Trump said Tuesday night in a sobering policy address near Milwaukee. “The Democratic party has failed and betrayed the African-American community. Democratic crime policies, education policies, and economic policies have produced only more crime, more broken homes, and more poverty.”

Trump then hammered his opponent.

“Hillary Clinton–backed policies are responsible for the problems in the inner cities today, and a vote for her is a vote for another generation of poverty, high crime, and lost opportunities,” Trump declared. “We reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton, which panders to and talks down to communities of color and sees them only as votes, not as individual human beings worthy of a better future. She doesn’t care at all about the hurting people of this country, or the suffering she has caused them.”

Trump noted who lords over most poor black neighborhoods.

“The Democratic party has run nearly every inner city in this country for 50 years, and run them into financial ruin,” Trump explained. “They’ve ruined the schools. They’ve driven out the jobs. They’ve tolerated a level of crime no American should consider acceptable.”

Johnson said Trump’s speech targeted what “Democrats have done to the black community over the last sixty years,” and laid things out more plainly, and boldly, than previous Republicans have dared to attempt.

“To have it laid out, to have it addressed, to not have it skirted over, to not have it bathed in welfare talk, and poverty talk, but actually to have it, to inspire black people that America is your country, and you deserve to have the greatness and richness thereof in it – I was over the moon last night! Congratulations, Donald Trump! Thank you!” she declared.

SiriusXM host Matt Boyle pointed out that polls show Trump faring very poorly with black voters, but Johnson was confident his speech in Wisconsin would help him turn those numbers around, and even meet his goal of drawing a larger percentage of the black vote than previous GOP candidates.

“The emphasis is on the American people, and for once, you have a Republican candidate that went above and beyond to make sure that black people feel like they are included in that America,” she said. “You don’t have to convince black people that having money is better than being poor. You don’t have to convince them of that. All you have to do is inspire them, and they will do the rest.”

“And that is what Hillary needs to be scared to death of,” she continued. “You have a generation of young blacks that are inspired to take over the world, and now we have a Republican candidate that’s saying, not only will I be your voice, not only will I stand with you, but I will win. And that is something that the black community has not had, since they have let these progressives be in control of our cities. Just the thought of having a real fight in the inner cities of America, with a Republican candidate that gives a damn — Hillary Clinton better be shakin’ in her boots!”

Someone on CNN said that if Trump were serious about wanting the black vote, he would address groups like the NAACP. That was in fact a big mistake that even President Reagan made.

Blacks voters are not the property of the NAACP, and they need to be addressed directly as individuals, over the heads of special-interest organizations that have led blacks into the blind alley of being a voting bloc that has been taken for granted far too long.

Clarke said, “Well, first of all, the social order in Milwaukee totally collapsed on Saturday night. When the social order collapses, tribal behavior takes over. When tribal behavior takes over, the law of the jungle replaces the rule of law and that’s why you end up with what you saw. Last night was a little better. Not good enough for me. I won’t be satisfied until these creeps crawl back into their holes so the good law abiding people who live in the Milwaukee ghettos can return to at least a calm quality of life.”

Trump should take this message to black churches, civic groups, and business associations and respectfully ask black Americans for their votes. All else being equal, if he convinces 15 percent of them, this election becomes a squeaker. If he scores 20 percent of black ballots, Trump trumps Clinton.

Nervous whites who see Trump meet black voters would find such images a comforting contrast to charges that Trump is a racist. Some will be sufficiently reassured and support him.

And Trump’s unyielding conservative critics — including Hillary Clinton’s enablers in the Never Trump crowd — might reevaluate a GOP nominee who finally expressed some “very difficult truths,” in Trump’s words, that other Republican standard bearers understood but were not brave enough to utter.

“If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, nonopinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.”

Two thoughts. First, will President Obama continue to claim that his administration does not negotiate with or pay ransom to terrorists? Or is that now modified: “We will use cash as ‘leverage’ while negotiating with terrorists”?

Second, Obama obviously used the $400 million for ransom leverage because he did not trust the Iranians to honor their agreement merely to release four hostages. Why, then, would he have us trust Iran to honor its agreement not to seek nuclear weapons when he has given away our leverage (the sanctions); when Iran has been seeking nuclear weapons for years; when, despite his deal with them, the Iranians continue ballistic missile development; and when Obama’s deal will leave them with an industrial-strength nuclear program that they can easily weaponize at any time?

Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters has been released, and moviegoers around the world now have the opportunity to judge what has arguably been the most controversial movie of the year for themselves. This however, did not cause the controversies that had been plaguing the production to stop.

In this video we will dig into the movies opening, the critical reception, the various controversies in the aftermath of the release, as well as its boxoffice and subsequent sequel prospects, now that the movie is increasingly being referred to as a flop.

Statistics from 2013 showed that 853 women were murdered in the last four years; 15% of them were killed because they wanted to divorce, 66% were killed by their ex-husbands or boyfriends. 12.5% were killed by their husbands, even though they filed a complaint and were provided with protection by the state. Violence against women in Turkey is more prevalent in the countryside where girls more often are taken out of school at an earlier age and where child marriages are more common.

In October 2013 a study conducted by researchers a Gaziantep University revealed that one in every three marriages in Turkey is a child marriage. The marriage of Turkish child brides to older men has repeatedly led to fatal tragedies. Among the most known cases in 2014 alone, is the death of two so-called child brides.

First, we need to establish that Islam allows female children to be married and engaged in sex prior to their first menses (prepubescent). For that we turn to the Islamic source materials. Starting with the Quran:

If you are in doubt concerning those of your wives who have ceased menstruating, know that their waiting period shall be three months. The same shall apply to those who have not menstruated. As for pregnant women, their term shall end with their confinement. God will ease the hardship of the man who fears him. 65:4, Dawood

Brother Sam Shamoun comments on this verse:

The surrounding context deals with the issue of the waiting period for divorce, and remarriage. The Quran is telling Muslims to wait for a certain period of time before making the divorce final or deciding to forego it. The Quran exhorts men to wait a period of three months in the case of women who either are no longer menstruating or haven’t even started their menstrual cycles! (Source)

Since Muslim men are to wait 3 months before divorcing a prepubescent child it means that they have been engaging in sex with those children.

Borrowing from Sam’s work (*) I quote three Islamic scholars commentary related to 65:4 and the subject of sex with prepubescent children:

Ibn Kathir writes regarding 65:4

<divorce them at their `Iddah>, “The `Iddah is made up of cleanliness and the menstrual period.” So he divorces her while it is clear that she is pregnant, or he does not due to having sex, or since he does not know if she is pregnant or not. This is why the scholars said that there are two types of divorce, one that conforms to the Sunnah and another innovated. The divorce that conforms to the Sunnah is one where the husband pronounces one divorce to his wife when she is not having her menses and without having had sexual intercourse with her after the menses ended. One could divorce his wife when it is clear that she is pregnant. As for the innovated divorce, it occurs when one divorces his wife when she is having her menses, or after the menses ends, has sexual intercourse with her and then divorces her, even though he does not know if she became pregnant or not. There is a third type of divorce, which is neither a Sunnah nor an innovation where one divorces A YOUNG WIFE WHO HAS NOT BEGUN TO HAVE MENSES, the wife who is beyond the age of having menses, and divorcing one’s wife before the marriage was consummated. (Source; bold and capital emphasis ours)

Al-Tabari said regarding 65:4

The interpretation of the verse “And those of your women as have passed the age of monthly courses, for them the ‘Iddah (prescribed period), if you have doubt (about their periods), is three months; and for those who have no courses [(i.e. they are still immature) their ‘Iddah (prescribed period) is three months likewise”. He said: The same applies to the ‘idaah for girls who do not menstruate because they are too young, if their husbands divorce them after consummating the marriage with them.

“Therefore, making mention of the waiting-period for girls who have not yet menstruated, clearly proves that it is not only permissible to give away the girl at this age but it is permissible for the husband to consummate marriage with her. Now, obviously no Muslim has the right to forbid a thing which the Qur’an has held as permissible.” (Maududi, volume 5, p. 620, note 13, emphasis added)

In a remote Turkish village, an ancient blood feud between two families has finally been put to rest, and a marriage arranged to seal the union; a man just released from a life in prison has been pledged to a teenage girl he has never met.

It is their wedding night and there are customs and rituals to be observed. But fearful of their consummation, the bride distracts her broken husband with tales, rounding out the hours as dawn draws ever nearer. Events become ever stranger as the claustrophobic night finally reaches a shattering conclusion.

Lyrical and intense, Night of Silence (Lal Gece) is an unforgettable piece of cinema with two brilliant performances at its heart.

Why is everyone so chilled out about the threats to Brexit? Why isn’t there more public fury over the plotting of lords and academics and experts to stymie Brexit and thwart the will of 17.4m people? In all the years I’ve been writing about politics, I cannot remember a time when democracy has been treated with as much disgust, with as much naked, Victorian-era elitism, as it is being today. And yet we’re all bizarrely mellow. We’re going about our business as if everything is normal, as if the elites aren’t right now, this very minute, in revolt against the people. We need to wake up.

Every day brings fresh news of the revolt of the elite, of the march of the neo-reactionaries against the mandate of the masses. At the weekend it was revealed that Brexit might not happen until 2019, because David Davis and Liam Fox can’t get their departments in order, the amateurs. The lovers of the EU and loathers of the blob could barely contain their glee. March for Europe, a celeb-backed, media-cheered chattering-class outfit agitated by the throng and the dumb decision it made on 23 June, spied an opportunity to do over Brexit entirely. ‘[W]e can help delay Brexit further and ultimately defeat it altogether,’ it said yesterday. ‘We can win this.’

‘We can win this.’ The ‘we’ they’re talking about is a minority view,backed by the likes of Bob Geldof, Owen Jones and Jarvis Cocker, yes, but by only 10,000 people on Facebook. And the thing they think they can win is the overthrow of the largest democratic mandate in British history.

(…)

It has to stop. We’re witnessing an explicit use of power and influence to overthrow, or at least water down, the say of the people. It is an outrage. And it’s being made worse by the uselessness of Theresa May’s cabinet, whose constant pushing back of triggering Article 50 gives the impression that it’s a scary, difficult thing to do (which it isn’t) and in the process inflames the anti-democratic ambitions of the new elites. We need to get real, and fast. Not only is Brexit at stake — so is democracy itself. Earlier generations took to the streets to roar against less ugly elitist campaigns than the one we’re currently living through. So why aren’t we on the streets protesting? I’m serious. They might have money and titles and newspaper columns, but we have the masses on our side. Let’s remind them of that.

“The issue here for [Trump], which is clear, is that this is a country in trouble. This is a country where the economy and foreign policy are in trouble. And she represents — for a country that sees, by vast majorities, that the political class in Washington is corrupt, and rigging the system for themselves, that has not yet come center place,” he said.

“What they’re trying to do is disqualify him from the Presidency. He needs to now go back to saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute, what kind of country do you want to continue to have? The one that is, inevitably, slowly before our eyes, declining and not succeeding? Or do you want to take a chance on making things better? I can help you make things better.’ He has not engaged that. The minute he engages, this election will change amazingly,” Caddell predicted.

“She is locked in to what she is,” he said of Clinton. “All she can do is put up barriers, or throw up arguments, against Trump. Trump is the independent variable in this equation. He is the one that can force those things that matter to people to the front. That is what a change election is about.”

Bannon suggested that “the general population doesn’t know this is a change election,” with so much attention focused on the clash of personalities, and Trump’s negative qualities. Caddell faulted Trump and his campaign for lacking the preparation and discipline to impose their own narrative.

(…)

Bannon advised Trump to prepare himself for even worse treatment from the press, if he should find a way to close his polling deficit against Clinton — an eventuality Bannon described as a “miracle,” while Caddell thought it was highly likely.

“He will close this gap. He will,” Caddell predicted. “And I’ll tell you, you’re right about the media. So, therefore, what do you do about that? You must take it to the level of notwhining about the media. It’s not about whining. It is about that they are playing a detailed role, and a conscious role, in terms of protecting the political class, because theyare the political class.”

He cited polling data that showed the American people have lost faith in the media, arguing that “two-thirds of them believe their level of objectivity and bias is as high as ever — they’re the lowest they’ve ever been, in Gallup.”

“They need to be challenged institutionally,” he said of the press. “Remember what they’re trying to do. They’re not trying just to knock Trump off. They need to suppress that which they have not been able to do all year, this rebellion out in the hinterlands, in both parties — whether it’s the Democrats’ revolt with Sanders, the Republican revolt with Trump — to suppress this instinct of the American people, to take control back of their country.”

“I want people to know that as hard as [these racist incidents] are on me, they don’t come even close to things we’ve seen like the shooting in North Carolina or the rhetoric around the Khan family at the DNC. It’s ridiculous and we as a country have to change and I feel like this is our moment.”

Some elements of the Egyptian media were furious Friday at the judoka for losing to an Israeli, Army Radio said. The outlets blamed Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi for El Shahaby’s appearance at the fight itself.

The 32-year-old Egyptian, a world championship medalist in 2010, had faced pressure on social media and from hardline Islamist groups in his homeland to withdraw from the match.

(…)

Messner said that the fact that the Egyptian actually turned up for the match signaled “a big improvement” in the Arab states’ attitude to Israeli athletes at the Olympics.

“In the past, it is not sure that a fight between those two athletes would have taken place. This is already a big improvement that Arabic countries accept to be opposed to Israel,” he said.

Le Parisien newspaper reported the magazine – which continues to make fun of religion – remains a top target for Islamic extremists and on Thursday formally filed a complaint against an unknown person after receiving a string of serious threats.

More than 60 disturbing messages, insults, and anti-Semitic remarks were posted on the magazine’s Facebook page, including one saying ‘You’re going to die!”. Another message warned of an imminent terrorist attack.

An inquiry has been launched and French police are currently investigating the “very threatening death threats” made against Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and journalists.

Express beskriver Charlie Hebdos billede således

The man’s penis can be seen through his long beard, and the woman is totally naked except for her veil over her head and shoulders and a caption below reads: “The reform of Islam: Muslims, loosen up” or “Musulmans decoincez vous”

Recent research by Professor Valentina Zharkova (Northumbria University) and colleagues has shed new light on the inner workings of the Sun. If correct, this new discovery means that future solar cycles and variations in the Sun’s activity can be predicted more accurately. The research suggests that the next three solar cycles will see solar activity reduce significantly into the middle of the century, producing conditions similar to those last seen in the 1600s – during the Maunder Minimum. This may have implications for temperatures here on Earth. Future solar cycles will serve as a test of the astrophysicists’ work, but some climate scientists have not welcomed the research and even tried to supress the new findings.

The Maunder Minimum occurred during the depths of the Little Ice Age, a period of feeble summers and bitingly cold winters, war, pestilence and famine. It wasn’t all bad: rivers like the Thames in London froze so thickly they could accommodate Ice Fairs; and it’s said that the slow tree growth induced by the cold gave the wood in Stradivarius violins their special timbre. On the whole, though, a descent into a new mini Ice Age would be massively debilitating both to the global economy and people’s living standards. Since the Little Ice Age ended in the middle of the Nineteenth century, we have all got used to the comforts and agricultural advantages (such as being able to grow wheat in more northerly latitudes) of living through a period of global warming. A second Little Ice Age will come as a very nasty shock.

That shock will be felt most especially by the world’s climate alarmist Establishment, whose scientists and learned institutions have staked their reputation on the idea that CO2, not solar activity, is the prime driver of climate and that the planet is on a warming trend not a cooling one.

This explains why when Professor Zharkova first released her findings last year, various climate alarmists went behind her back to the Royal Astronomical Society to try to persuade them to withdraw the press release.

(…)

Meteorologist Paul Dorian of Vencore Weather has also predicted an imminent solar minimum as the world finds itself in the weakest solar cycle for more than a century.

Evans is so confident of the imminent cooling that he’s helping set up a hedge fund specifically geared to betting against global warming. I’ve written about this before at Breitbart. It’s called Cool Futures and I am – technically speaking – a hedge fund manager because I bought a share in it. You can too if you go to their website.

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, observes that “strangely silent is the mainstream media about the fitness” for presidential office of Hillary Clinton. At AAPS’ website, Orient summarizes the concerns about Clinton’s health that she says are growing:

There’s the photograph of Secretary Clinton’s difficulty walking up some steps. Now inability to climb stairs does not necessarily disqualify a person for public office. However, neither she nor people with her apparently anticipated a problem. The people helping her seem to be preventing a fall. Did she simply trip? Or was it a seizure or a stroke?

Videos widely circulated on the internet are, if authentic, very concerning. One shows prolonged, inappropriate laughter; another, strange head movements. In a third, she appeared momentarily dazed and confused, and lost her train of thought. Reportedly, she has a volcanic temper. (This is probably not new.)

A man who stays close to her, who is reportedly not a Secret Service officer, was photographed carrying something in his hand that purportedly might have been an autoinjector of Valium.

While we don’t have Mrs. Clinton’s medical records, it is widely stated that she experienced a fall that caused a concussion. Since then, she is sometimes seen wearing eyeglasses with prisms, as are used to correct double vision.

Orient explains that serious concussions can often cause traumatic brain injury that is not always detected on standard medical tests such as a CT or MRI.

These are some symptoms: difficulty thinking, attention deficits, confusion, memory problems, frustration, mood swings, emotional outbursts, agitation, headaches, difficulties with balance and coordination, and seizures. Many veterans with such an injury cannot hold a job or interact normally with their families.

“Obviously, it would be very dangerous for a person subject to symptoms like this to be dealing with foreign leaders or making critical decisions,” she states.

(….)

“Is it conceivable that Hillary supporters would really be voting for Huma Abedin, Clinton’s top aide, or for the First First Husband President, Bill Clinton?” she asks. “The American people are entitled to know the objective medical facts about Secretary Clinton.”

But, when you read she had a history of previous deep venous thrombosis in 1998 and 2009 – she’s had twice a clot in her leg – these are serious clots that lead to something called pulmonary embolism, which can also cause sudden death. So, she has an underlying recurrent blood clot in her leg, a clot in her transverse sinus…why is she clotting?

And then why would you leave her on the oldest and sort of most treacherous anticoagulant? If you’re going to leave somebody on an anticoagulant, why the oldest, old fashion anticoagulant – which by the way I’m a fan of Coumadin, I’m a fan of it – but for kind of spurious reasons, wouldn’t you think somebody who’s a candidate for president [would] have one of the newer anticoagulants that are safer, and the indications for her staying on anticoagulants are kind of spurious…it makes me worry about the sophistication of the healthcare she is getting.

Pregnant women, children and even elderly Venezuelans crossed into Colombia on Sunday after the border was temporarily reopened, allowing them to buy basic foods and toiletries — rare commodities in their home country.

Tearful Venezuelans had gone weeks without basic food items like milk, flour and toilet paper. It’s a sad but common part of daily life today in crisis-ridden Venezuela, a country that has the world’s largest proven reserves of oil. Colombian officials estimate that about 100,000 Venezuelans crossed the border.

Venezuela is expected to dive deeper into the abyss this year, according to new projections published Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF forecasts Venezuela’s economy will shrink 10% this year, worse than its previous estimate of 8%. It also estimates that inflation in Venezuela will catapult to 700% this year, up from the earlier guess of about 480%.

“Venezuela’s economic condition continues to deteriorate,” says Alejandro Werner, chief Latin America economist at the IMF. The estimates for growth and inflation are the worst worldwide.

The numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. Venezuela is deep into a humanitarian crisis — people are dying in ill-equipped hospitals and many live without basic food items. Venezuela can’t pay to import goods because its government is desperately strapped for cash after years of mismanagement of its funds, heavy spending on poorly-run government programs, and lack of investment on its oil fields.

Chavez’s supporters, the Chavistas, always carry a little blue book — the constitution of their elected president - and wear their hearts proudly on their sleeve: “He’s enlightened and protected by God,” comments one Chavista. But these feelings are by no means universal.

Despite the vast oil revenue, over 70% of the population live in poverty. Chavez came to power promising social reforms, but strikes have led to economic collapse. “His relationship with the poor is just empty rhetoric … his economic policies create more poor every day,” complains trade union leader Pablo Medina. During the 1990s he provided vital support for Chavez but now regards his former comrade as a class traitor.

Many of Chavez’s other supporters are starting to question his policies. The middle classes have lost confidence in the police and barricade themselves behind heavily armed compounds. Those who can are fleeing the country in droves. “If things keep going as they are, I think we could have a civil war,” states Fernando: “This is not a revolution. Ordinary people aren’t getting anything out of it. The only people benefiting from it are him and the people around him.”